


Five times

by Valmouth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton
Genre: Aphrodisiacs, Falling In Love, Fic times fic, M/M, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), POV Qui-Gon Jinn, Poor Obi-Wan, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-10 21:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8939659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valmouth/pseuds/Valmouth
Summary: Five times Qui-Gon has an opportunity to take advantage, and the one time he decides to take it (though not quite in quite the way Obi-Wan appreciates).





	1. Five times of denial

The first time Obi-Wan is only fourteen.

Old enough to feel his situation, but distressingly small in stature.

Qui-Gon Jinn looks down from his lofty six feet four inches of disconcerted serenity to where all five miserable feet of his Padawan are vibrating just slightly with the sheer effort of standing still. And mostly upright.

Except for where Obi-Wan is hunched over.

“In the circumstances, you had better stay in our quarters,” Qui-Gon says.

And promptly flees.

Later, when they’ve left the planet and Obi-Wan is no longer under the influence of an accidental aphrodisiac, he’ll have a discussion with Obi-Wan about how there is no shame in his body’s sexual responses. About how Obi-Wan will find he has very many responses of that sort in store for him in the coming years. And about how the important thing to remember is that he need not be a slave to them any more than he need be embarrassed by them.

“You control your body, Padawan,” he says gently, “Not the other way around.”

Obi-Wan still seems distinctly uncomfortable discussing the topic with his venerable Master, so Qui-Gon is perfectly happy to say as little on the matter as is needed.

Besides, he leaves a bottle of lubricant on Obi-Wan’s shelf in the ‘fresher. Since his charge has no trouble walking, moving, or smiling in languid satisfaction the next morning, he counts it as a victory.

Not that there would have been anything wrong with more… personal advice.

It is not unheard of for a Master to offer far more detailed assistance.

He could, for example, have duplicated Dooku’s approach, but he feels unable to offer an unsolicited lecture on the erogenous zones of the male body with several recommendations for erotic poetry and a reading list of philosophical and medical treatises on burgeoning sexuality in humanoids.

A life spent meditating in quiet corners of the Room of A Thousand Fountains has led to some embarrassingly nuanced suggestions that other Masters have even offered hands-on succour.

He thinks about that for a minute and then banishes the images.

Obi-Wan is his Padawan, the Jedi code forbids deep romantic attachments, and Qui-Gon finds absolutely no desire in himself to put his hands in any sexual manner on a fourteen year old boy a full head shorter than he is.

The logistics alone have his spine twinging in prospective pain.

\--------------------------------------------------------------

 

The second time is only six months later.

This time is no accident.

They’re at a feast, protecting a planetary King through the last of his daughter’s wedding festivities in the middle of a political crisis. The politicians have said a lot about ‘mending bridges’ and ‘hopeful new beginnings’, and for once things have been relatively easy. Qui-Gon has been allowed to use soft words and logic rather than the Force suggestions that have started to come too easily and too quickly.

So he is perhaps overly relaxed the night before their scheduled departure.

The first he knows of it is when he sees movement from the corner of his eye.

It isn’t hostile so he merely turns his head, expecting to see his Padawan either charming their hosts or struggling awkwardly with diplomatic small talk.

He sees neither.

Instead, he catches the end of an interaction in which a man clearly old enough to know better hands his student a bowl of wine and stands there smiling while Obi-Wan drinks it.

He will reprimand himself later for not mentioning this specific custom but he had assumed the fact that Obi-Wan is small and slender and obviously under patronage would be enough to keep all amorous advances at bay. It turns out there’s been a miscommunication about Obi-Wan’s status and age.

His Padawan is surprised when Qui-Gon extracts him with little notice and less diplomacy, and then somewhat wildly concerned when the effects kick in halfway back to his room. By the time his Master has deposited him on his bed, he is moaning uncontrollably.

“I think in the circumstances, I’ll stay in our quarters,” he babbles, and his pupils are blown so wide his eyes are almost black in the candlelight.

His braid is stuck to his flushed cheek and his lips are very red.

But he is actually grinning as though this is the most wonderful turn of events he has ever experienced.

“Your sense of timing for rebellion and humour is unacceptable,” Qui-Gon replies, “We will work on them tomorrow.”

And he leaves him there with the tin of bacta gel they use for emergency healing.

It’s two hours later, when he is accepting a formal apology from the King and the noble who tried to bed a fourteen-year-old Jedi apprentice, that he is reminded somewhat forcibly of the need to increase the mental shields that keep their training bond from violating their respective privacy.

He rids himself of the barrage of images of what appears to be a orgy – large hands and long legs and long hair. He has no doubt the fantasy is very nice but he finds himself at the age when intimacy is far more seductive than sensation.

Still, Qui-Gon feels an affectionate smile tug at the corners of his mouth.

He remembers what it was like to be fourteen, and he doesn’t begrudge Obi-Wan his… enthusiasm. 

\----------------------------------------------------------

 

The third time happens at seventeen.

This time Qui-Gon is genuinely worried.

Obi-Wan has always been impetuous and passionate, prone to allowing his emotions to run him headlong into danger.

And he can hardly blame the boy for falling in love with a woman like Satine Kryze after spending almost a year on the run with her.

Qui-Gon reconciles himself to the prospect of losing yet another promising apprentice by the end of the mission. In darker moments he wonders if this too is a fault in his training. He wonders if he is too indulgent or too stern; or so forbidding that his Padawans seek validation from other sources of affection.

But Obi-Wan gets on the ship with him.

Not that this solves anything.

His Padawan has a self-destructive streak when he is hurt, and before Qui-Gon really knows what’s happening, he discovers that no one has seen Obi-Wan in the Temple since the mid-day meal.

He finds him in a den of iniquity somewhere on the lower depths of Coruscant, about to have the Force knows what enacted upon his drugged and very willing body.

Qui-Gon dispatches the aggressors without troubling himself too much but his apprentice is rather more difficult. Obi-Wan is still small and slender but he is also determined and lithe. He is, moreover, experiencing a temporary lapse of all inhibitions.

Qui-Gon contends with the entangling arms and legs, the warm breath on his shoulder and the cat-like nuzzle of the tip of Obi-Wan’s nose with what he considers to be remarkable calm. His hired transport driver is scandalized, not only because they are Jedi but also because there is an obvious age difference.

Obi-Wan is seventeen years old and heartbroken, and Qui-Gon is fifty two and simply broken.

He will not add to the embarrassment for either of them by falling victim to what is, when all is said and done, a simple enough temptation to resist.

They arrive back at the Temple without any further incident. Qui-Gon locks Obi-Wan in their shared quarters before taking himself to the Room Of A Thousand Fountains.

He meditates until his own sickening worry is safely purged. Then he meditates to reconcile the banked embers of his anger. Lastly he meditates on his selfishness.

He understands the sacrifice Obi-Wan made for his dreams, and understands all too well the agony of feeling someone you love fade out of your life. He knows he will have to face him with the cold truth that there will be many more sacrifices expected of him in the future.

That is the life of a Jedi Knight.

Still, by the morning, Obi-Wan is finally, deeply asleep.

He returns to their chambers and smooths the thin braid behind a pink ear before tucking the blankets around Obi-Wan’s shoulders.

He makes sapir tea when Obi-Wan wakes, and they drink in silence.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The fourth time does not happen for some years.

Possibly because their missions have begun to grow darker, and more volatile.

There are fewer trips to scented palaces and rich cityscapes; far more to tumbledown quarters and rough trade worlds.

And Obi-Wan has grown.

He is older and more experienced, more circumspect in his actions, but that falls away when he ends up in a fever-haze in a mud hut in the middle of a forest on the Outer Rim, trying to disrobe and too weak to do it by himself.

Qui-Gon tries to stop him at first, and then flinches at the heat rising off Obi-Wan’s skin.

So he helps him.

He removes robes and inner tunics and tears off a strip of linen so he can wipe down the sweating, flushed lines of Obi-Wan’s brow and neck and shoulders and chest.

His Padawan is all of twenty and he has broadened. His musculature has thickened just enough to make him lift his chin and strut every now and again.

All of which is for nothing when he’s lying down and bereft of his confidence. Qui-Gon is reminded of nothing so much as a youngling in the medical centre back at the Temple.

The desire to protect is unexpectedly strong, and Qui-Gon sits back, perturbed by the harsh grate of panic and useless anger.

That he feels it is, he supposes, not surprising. Masters and Padawans can share intense bonds if their natures are compatible for friendship as well as learning, but his skills include the ability to purge himself of negative emotions. He takes himself through each logical step of rationalisation – there is no reason to panic because panic clouds the mind; there is no reason to be angry because the anger is not directed at anyone or anything. Here there are no drugs or sleazy bars. Obi-Wan’s fever is not the same as Tahl’s decline into death. There is no one who has engineered this for their own nefarious gain.

Obi-Wan opens his eyes.

“Master,” he says huskily, “I think I can walk. I think… if you’ll help me up…”

And his Padawan, with all the gracelessness of an eolith colt born with eight legs instead of six, tries to stand.

Qui-Gon stands there with his arms full of feverish, naked, vulnerable flesh and finds his anger isn’t abating. His panic is, however, so he accepts that as a partial victory.

“You’re very strong,” Obi-Wan murmurs.

“You are very weak,” he returns, “Lie down.”

“Lie with me,” Obi-Wan offers.

And looks up.

His eyes are blue, and clouded.

Qui-Gon is fairly certain he has not just been propositioned by a sick student so he has no compunctions about waving the invitation aside irritably and manhandling his recalcitrant Padawan back beneath the rough coverings.

Obi-Wan seems to take it in his stride and falls into a fitful sleep almost immediately.

The fever breaks four hours later and Qui-Gon gently squeezes Obi-Wan’s shoulder in relief. The skin beneath his calloused palm is smooth and soft and firm with healthy muscle and bone.

The anger starts to drain away.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------

 

The fifth time is accidental.

Again.

This time, Obi-Wan is not the only who ingests it.

Qui-Gon has the nagging suspicion that he knows why the tiny blue flowers from the mountains of Ithiliom O’Far are so precious but he cannot recall exactly why. He thinks vaguely it has something to do with ‘rejuvenation’ or ‘revitalisation’ but he isn’t entirely certain.

Still, the flowers smell good as they steep in the water, and since he has let his Padawan talk him into this brief stay at a retreat before their return to the Temple, and especially since the woman serving them is pretty and old enough that he doesn’t feel ashamed for noticing, he puts asides his doubts and focuses – as always – on the present.

The wind whistles around the rock crags and trees outside, and the night air is just cool enough to make the tea welcome.

Obi-Wan is a sleek, supine presence across the low table from him, golden in the overhead lights as he talks animatedly about something Qui-Gon doesn’t feel the need to listen to.

The Force is an ebb and flow of peace for once, and not a tidal pool of anticipation and strain and danger.

He thinks he might be getting too old for many more years of diplomatic missions.

At least, of the kind that keep him running for his life. Or for the life of someone else.

He wonders idly if his former Master feels like this and if this is why Dooku hasn’t been to the Temple in years; if this is why his self-appointed missions are always slow, tedious affairs.

“You’re not listening to me,” Obi-Wan says.

“You have just told me that Knight Yaddle found a blue-crested bovine hybrid in her ‘fresher,” Qui-Gon returns amiably, “I am waiting for the punchline.”

Obi-Wan snorts and reaches for his tea.

Qui-Gon watches him affectionately, noting the long swallow and the firm grip, the strong bone of Obi-Wan’s wrist a contrast to the flex of his forearm as his sleeve rolls back.

He himself sips in shallow tastes, barely enough to feel the liquid on his tongue, cradling the cup gently in hands that feel much too big for such delicate pottery.

He is not made for delicate things, he thinks distantly, too tall and too large and too impatient.

Dooku had been elegance at every point, with neat, efficient movements.

He sips his tea and lets the warmth flow into his blood, unknotting tension and residual strain.

Obi-Wan continues to talk, carelessly gesturing with the empty cup in his hand, his braid somehow on display, looking both endearing and absurd now, so close to the age that a Padawan could expect to be nominated for the trials to full knighthood.

A braid Qui-Gon will cut off with gladness and sadness in equal measure, he thinks.

The collar of Obi-Wan’s robe slips a little to reveal a ridge of clavicle.

In this place, his Padawan has clearly not bothered with half the layers of undertunics that a proper Jedi should wear.

It is a good look for his staid and precise student.

Obi-Wan is never caught with his braid out of place, never caught without his comm unit or datapad, never caught without full control. Except, Qui-Gon reminds himself, except for those instances when he is, and no one else has been allowed to see those but him.

No one else has been privileged.

He doesn’t remember why the blue flowers from the mountains of Ithiliom O’Far are important until they’re both languid and relaxed, eyes half hooded as they say too little and feel too much. And by then even Obi-Wan knows what has overtaken them.

“This is getting to be a habit,” he grumbles.

“Remember, my Padawan, you control your body,” Qui-Gon sighs.

The woman’s eyes are brown and her lashes are long, her skin is dark and looks soft and she smiles at him just slightly with a slow, knowing invitation.

Obi-Wan clears his throat. “Of course,” he says, and his good humour grows sharp, “And I assume you will control yours.”

Qui-Gon shrugs the sarcasm away, too euphoric to care overmuch. He spends his night in meditation, feeling the fluid ebb and flow of the Force through his heightened senses. His erection hardly seems to matter in the grand scheme of things.

He doesn’t bother to raise the mental shields on the training bond but he assumes Obi-wan does, since he gets no intrusive images of orgies.

When dawn comes, he finally relinquishes his vigil and sleeps, worn out and sated.


	2. And that one time

There is something strange to being a part of the Force, something unsettling.

For one thing, time moves in odd ways, and he finds himself flashing forwards and backwards and sideways until he learns how to guide himself through the tangled skeins of life and matter.

For another, perception is difficult.

He is dead, to all intents and purposes, and if he were not so stubbornly holding on to his self-awareness, he would not still be a single entity navigating the Force like a ship in the farthest reaches of space. He would have – should have – gradually eased into the consciousness of… something other.

Something infinitely Bigger than himself.

He hears this from the fading spirit of a Master Jedi who has trained three Padawans to Knighthood, whose life’s work was a study of the remnants of research hearkening back to the Chatos Academy. And who embraces oblivion with a smile.

He isn’t inclined to listen at the time, however, since the only Padawan he ever trained to Knighthood is killed by soldiers, the one he trained to the eve of his Trials is currently on the run for treason, and the boy he once thought would be his last Padawan – his hope for the future – had just murdered everyone in the Temple of Coruscant including the old, the sick and the younglings.

The Infinite Bigness that seems most important to his consciousness in that moment is not the whistle of the wind in the trees, or the song of a triple loopan choir, or the bubbling scream of a blue swamp eel, it’s in the rise of a new Sith Empire that he can observe but which remains frustratingly out of his influence.

Until, that is, he learns how to navigate this Sea of Life and Matter.

Yoda is most impressed by this trick.

He is less impressed by the hell the universe has turned into.

He is almost violently grieved by the years he watches Obi-Wan hide and wait and age. He tries to initiate contact, pushes hard at the Force, at the ripples of consciousness, at the training bond he can still detect some days in a corner of his mind, but beyond a handful of times Obi-Wan does not respond.

Not even at the very moment of his death.

Qui-Gon believes for a moment that his horror and denial have finally fuelled a manifestation that can be seen by living eyes but then he follows Obi-Wan’s line of sight to Luke Skywalker, an orphan on whose young shoulders the fate of the universe suddenly rests, and he steels himself for the inevitable.

“You always did have a flair for the dramatic,” he says.

Obi-Wan is cheerful and old, still flickering in his perception of himself as he was beneath the twin suns of Tatooine, and Qui-Gon suddenly wonders what he himself looks like. If he has kept to the age at which he died or if he has somehow slipped unconsciously into a younger or more refined version of himself.

With uncanny mildness, Obi-Wan observes, “You look the same as I last saw you.”

“I don’t have a lightsabre hole through my body.”

“No, that part is true. But then neither do I.”

Obi-Wan is the one who tinkers with his appearance. Who appears in one moment as he was as Jedi General Kenobi, and the next as a rebellious Padawan of thirteen, running away from his dream to stop a war.

Qui-Gon is more concerned with the flow of events in the world of the living, trying to find a way to make contact through the Force.

Just a hint of kindness, he thinks, of hope and courage to keep Luke going, to keep his resolve strong.

“The feel of it is marvellous,” Obi-Wan says, and watches his hands as they weather rapidly before his very eyes.

“If you must manipulate the Force, use it to connect with your new Padawan,” Qui-Gon says sharply, “He’s about to fly a suicide mission against a Death Star.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes sharpen and his image flickers. He looks like a man of forty, stocky with the encroaching years and craggy from manual labour.

Qui-Gon puts his hands impulsively on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. “Concentrate,” he says, and, “I may have an idea.”

The training bond has been dormant for decades, ever since the fateful day he breathed his last in Obi-Wan’s arms, but here it flares to life like a beacon, more powerful than it has ever been, and he slips like light through the path into Obi-Wan’s mind, twines around him and pours out his energy, his strength.

And he almost loses himself in the process.

He doesn’t quite remember what happens next but when he comes to, it is to find himself back in Obi-Wan’s arms, in an attitude of death, with his Padawan as he last saw him with his living eyes calling his name. Obi-Wan is almost vibrating with the sheer effort of not shaking him as he holds him.

“Do not do that again, Master,” Obi-Wan says.

And he sits up slowly, thankful that there is no residual ache in his joints on this spiritual level.

Obi-Wan is clearly not looking at the positives. “Keep something of yourself back, next time. You almost…”

“Died?” Qui-Gon asks mildly.

His Padawan flushes and grinds his teeth.

“Disappeared,” he corrects bitingly, “Into me. If I had not pushed you away, had not known you as I do, what would you have become? Did you stop to ask yourself that?”

“You perceived me?”

Qui-Gon looks down reflectively.

His hands seem… rather larger. He looks at Obi-Wan, measuring the inches he knows are too far apart in their respective heights. He feels all of a sudden like he is too big, somehow stretched too long and too wide.

“I see,” he says, and then concentrates.

He feels his frame shrink. Feels the easier fit of his bones and skin and tendons. And he feels the bond, wide open and leaking confusion, mutinous frustration, fear, and love.

The moment he notices it, it withdraws with a snap and Obi-Wan rises to his feet. “I did the best I could,” he says.

“And I appreciate it,” Qui-Gon says, “We will practice it so that you do not have to bear the burden of my memory alone next time.”

He expects to hear his precise apprentice murmur something acidic about caution and care, about the folly of manipulating the Force when they do not know what the consequences may be. He expects Obi-Wan to take exception to being treated like a Padawan at all, for all that his former student is unconsciously sporting a Padawan braid.

But he is not prepared for Obi-Wan to stare at him as though he has said something startling, blue eyes very blue and very round, and then to start laughing. Not without mirth, but with a kind of sharp desperation that confuses Qui-Gon.

“Master,” Obi-Wan says, and closes his eyes.

And all of a sudden Qui-Gon is given a memory of his Padawan aged thirteen, humiliatingly aroused and alone in bed with nothing but his hand and a bottle of oil and no clear idea of what he wants except that he needs relief and release and pleasure. Hard on the heels of that memory comes one of a royal celebration, of an older man who offers pleasure and respect and a cup of wine that spreads fire through his bloodstream. That one comes with an echoing fantasy of a large hand between his legs, of a strong presence behind him and the safety of being shadowed by a far larger frame. The third is of rough need and painful self-destruction, fuelled by anger and calmed beneath understanding and reassurance even in the face of provocation. The fourth is a shack in the forests; misery and vulnerability and a hesitant invitation turned down, but the cool relief of care and concern. The fifth…

The fifth is of smoky tea, and mild light, and him. Of watching him and being watched in return. And of gentle anticipation building to something so inevitable that he expects the instinct to reach out, to touch, to kiss.

Until an icy bath of disappointment cools the ardour in his blood to mere physical sensation, and he is treated to a fantasy of what might have been. Of the two of them in a bed somewhere private, safe and secure, slowly moving together in the dark. Emotions tangling as easily as limbs.

He blinks down at Obi-Wan in all stages of arousal from miserable to vulnerable to curious to enticing, from child to man to nothing but spirit.

“You had other lovers,” he says, “In all the years as Padawan and Knight.”

“My lovers as a Padawan numbered two. Both were female and I enjoyed my time with them very much. My lovers as a knight numbered three, an excessive amount given that all three times were hasty and for the wrong reasons. My only lover as an exile was a woman as broken as I was. She stole away in the night and left me to my fantasies and sand. And through all that time, you were the constant. You, my Master, were the memory I turned to when the way was hard. You were the reassurance I craved. I felt your presence at all times, a seeping wound in the corner of my mind that wouldn’t heal.”

“I never meant…”

“I know.”

And suddenly Obi-Wan looks old again. Resigned.

“I never asked because I know you. Qui-Gon Jinn. An honourable Master, and an honourable man. Unable to deflower a child, unwilling to take advantage of the vulnerable. You hold friendship more sacred than love, it would seem.”

“Obi-Wan, it was never my intention to reject you.”

“Oh, but it was. You mean you wish rejection didn’t have to come with pain.”

Qui-Gon is silent for a moment, and then sighs. “Yes,” he says baldly.

“I understood,” Obi-Wan says, and smiles just slightly.

It is not the smile of his former Padawan. This is the smile Ben Kenobi gives to young Force-sensitive orphans, the smile of a man who is burdened with secrets but will remake the truth to get what he wants in the kindest way possible.

And perhaps this is the best way, Qui-Gon thinks, to leave this painful chapter here.

But he is puzzled by the parts of himself that Obi-Wan has clearly failed to see. The reasons and reactions, yes, but not the emotions.

The bond is a quiet hum, now, barely a whisper of consciousness, as he hesitantly pushes his own memory across the slight divide.

“I did not make the choice lightly,” he offers, “And had I lived to see you knighted, I cannot answer for where we might have ended.”

He sends Obi-Wan the image he carries of him as a Padawan on the cusp of twenty three, close to the completion of his training, golden in the light and glowing with life. This memory is not lust and yearning – as Obi-Wan’s youthful fantasies are – this memory is sedate and staid and filled with the sound of the wind, the taste of the tea, the sight of a ridge of clavicle more important than anything else in the room. Of Obi-Wan talking and happy, young and confident, of the knot of desire both acknowledged and yet so small a part of Qui-Gon’s complete devotion to this one human male.

Obi-Wan flickers, a hand turning young and lines smoothing out before reforming.

“That night should have ended in one bed for both of us,” he says softly.

“I thought at the time it would. But you left, and I felt it was not right to pursue you.”

“You were smiling at the woman. I assumed she was the object of your desire.”

“She was attractive. I desired you.”

“You never had before.”

“You were a child before. Or sick.”

“There were other times, not only when I was dosed with aphrodisiacs.”

“True.”

They stand silent, caught in the ebb and flow of the Force around them, contemplating ‘what ifs’ and ‘what might have beens’.

And then the Hutt encases Solo in carbonite and Leia’s anger ripples outward in a red haze, echoing through them like a wash of darkness.

They turn back at once to the events of the world of the living, side by side, and Qui-Gon thinks of Queen Amidala of the Naboo and a young Tatooine slave boy, bonding in the cold mustiness of a spaceship.

The past is a powerful tool but only one of many, and the future is too uncertain. He reminds himself that the present is all that matters, and that it is only in the present that he can act for good.

He places his hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder.

“Keep my memory, Obi-Wan, as I keep yours,” he smiles, “Who knows? We may yet see this mission succeed.”

Obi-Wan grins, light and bright, and Qui-Gon has to tip his chin down to look at him, but he does it gladly as their bond twines firmly between them.

 


End file.
